Freedom Fight Night CEO & Founder Harrison Rogers - Team Tito Ortiz vs. Team Ryan Bader

Harrison Rogers (@harrisonjrogers) is the CEO and Founder of Freedom Fight Night. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about the next event with Team Tito Ortiz vs. Team Ryan Bader on July 15 in Mesa, AZ. He also talks about why he started Freedom Fight Night, his love of MMA, the biggest lessons he has learned as an entrepreneur and much more!

For more information on Freedom Fight Night visit: http://freedomfightnight.com

On Freedom Fight Night:

“We are having our first Freedom Fight Night in Arizona. We had our first one in Miami and it was a blast. Some of my friends and family were frustrated because they were like ‘Why did you do it across the country?’ So we are bringing it home:

On being a fight promoter:

“It evolved and it is still evolving. It started out as trying to figure out how to be in politics without being some fundraiser guy. Being in the private sector, one of my passions is MMA. I am not a fighter but a lot of our audience in the MMA world want to be involved in politics but they don’t know where to begin. It seems like MMA is the only sport that has not moved into the woke movement. So let’s see if we can evolve this and move it into other sports and have a good time promoting fights.”  

On the big names at Freedom Fight Night One:

“Yeah it was surreal. Watching these big names I saw growing up like Frank Mir, Tito Ortiz, Rampage Jackson, Evander Holyfeld came too. How did this happen?”

Where it all began for Harrison Rogers:

“I grew up sucking at formal education, I dropped out of high school in my junior year to start my first business cleaning carpets. Over the summer of my junior year, it got that busy that I could either be in the formal high school class and not succeed, or I can pursue this and make some money. So I grew the business enough so that I was busy and the rest is history.”

On what was next:

“I sold my carpet cleaning business in 2007, right before the market crashed, to go on a missionary mission. The problem is I parlayed the proceeds into real estate. I came back from the mission and had a heart attack at 19, it was a birth defect. I didn’t have any money because I had no business, so I had to start from scratch.”

On what scratch was:

“Well I got married, I met my wife shortly after I got back. Then I took out as many student loans as possible and enrolled in the cheapest online college that we could find, because then you can max out the student loans. We did that, and after paying for the tuition costs, we had about $6,000, and I traded that in currency. I got really good at figuring out how political announcements would affect currency, so how it would affect the dollar against the euro. So I did a lot with the euro and dollar, the euro was tanking because of the situation with Spain. I loved speculating with the markets, so I said if I have extra time, I am going to help my sister and mom, my sister has extreme autism. So I got a contract with Arizona to provide these services, being able to pay providers a good wage, you get the best of the best.”  

On dream partners for Freedom Fight Night:

“Well Frank Mir has been an incredible partner. Not only does he know so much of the MMA world, he is our host and commentator. So many people that don’t know MMA listen to him and he is educating them on the moves. But right now, I would love to have a Joe Rogan or an Elon Musk supporting this.”

On his favorite MMA fight:

“Just because of what it did for the sport, I think the Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar fight. I wish I could say something before then but I am not an OG.”

On future Freedom Fight Night Plans:

“I want to say that nothing is set in stone, but in October on Freedom Fight Night 3, Tito Ortiz wants to do his final fight. It’s weird growing up with all these legends, and now to have them on a card that I am promoting, it’s fun.”

On what he is grateful for:

“My family, a loving creator and the opportunity I have right now."